Not a very good week

Not doin’ particularly well, my friends, though I’m not doing that bad either. The reason I’m not doing so well is that I haven’t gotten much work done on Dragonar…barely any. No motivation. Why? Because, well, it seemed to me the method of timing I described last week wasn’t very efficient. Google Translate isn’t as good as I thought, it gives me nonsense much of the time. Also, having to jump back and forth between my timing program and Google Translate is time-consuming. If I was fluent in Italian, I could just translate everything straight from the script in the timing program immediately, which would be faster. Finally, my translators themselves aren’t really available…my Japanese translator, UK Windom, is busy with another series he promised to work on before he started with Dragonar, and I’m having a tough time contacting my Italian translator…maybe steam’s messaging is iffy or something, perhaps I’ll email him. Additionally, my QC isn’t inclined to check over more than one episode a week. So really, it seems that no matter what, about one episode a week is as fast as I can go on Dragonar (next episode should be up on Monday, BTW). I suppose that’s disappointing, since I don’t know when I’ll have to return to work on my dissertation, but oh well, no point stressing over it.

In regards to my dissertation, though, I at least am trying to get some more sources on Henry Highland Garnet and Martin R. Delany. Sent an email to an archivist at a very famous research center for African American history, so that’s a little bit of progress.

Aside from that, I think I’ll get back into my old groove…though this week I only watched a bit of anime, episodes 8 of Jojo and Macross Delta. Both were good, though there’s quite a revelation at the end of Delta–I’ll stay mum on it to avoid spoiling folks, but it’s important! ;o

The last thing for this week: I’d like to present two small musings. The first is about my brush with the legal system. Remember a few weeks ago when I got pulled over by a cop for driving a car with an expired registration? It was no big deal, I just had to get it inspected and they’d waive the fine if they saw proof, but I had to come into the courthouse physically to show proof, which was where things got annoying.

See, yesterday my dad and I went to the courthouse at about 9 AM and showed the clerk our inspection certificate. We were told to wait in another line and filter in to another courtroom until the judge came in–this took an hour. Then we had to be seated and wait for the judge to get through all the people ahead of us. Most of the time it was just folks pleading guilty to parking tickets and agreeing to pay, other times (like for speeding) she admonished the defendants to be more careful. All this took another hour, mind you. But for inspection issues like mine?

I just walked up there, she looked at the inspection certificate, and then said, “OK, you’re good. Case dismissed.” and we were just sent on our way.

I waited like 2 hours for not even 2 sentences. If all I had to do was prove I (well, my dad) got the car inspected, why the hell couldn’t I have just shown a clerk the certificate instead of waiting an hour in line and then another hour in court? Even better, why couldn’t I just have scanned the certificate and emailed it to the traffic court people? So much time wasted needlessly…ugh. But, oh well, no big deal…like I said, not even mad. At least I’ve put this silliness behind me.

The second thing I wanna talk about is Mighty No. 9. I’m sure most of you have heard about how that game recently released the worst trailer ever–EVERYONE is making fun of it, even the Sonic the Hedgehog twitter. Now, I also backed Bloodstained, which is another kickstarter project from the same people (Inti Creates). A lot of folks are worried Bloodstained will turn into as much of a trainwreck as Mighty No. 9, but I disagree. Here are the reasons I gave on the Bloodstained forums, though I will admit I’m biased, since I’m a mod there. I think my reasoning stands, though:

“it seems to me IGA and the Bloodstained team avoided a lot of the pitfalls that hit Inafune.

1: Unreal Engine 4 is still supported and seems to be much easier to work with than UE3, which stopped receiving support while MN9 was being developed, I think.

2: The Bloodstained team seems to have a better sense of focus. While I can understand why Inafune wanted to get started on Red Ash ASAP (if folks were finished with work on MN9, it made sense to have them set up on a new project), but some of the other stuff was distractions. I can’t understand why anyone thought it was a good idea to even think of a MN9 animated series or movie before the game was even out.

3: From what I understand, the 3ds was a significant bottleneck (in terms of graphics and a lot of other things) for MN9 as a whole. Bloodstained, fortunately, doesn’t have to worry about that.

4: More abstractly, I think IGA just has a better handle on the aesthetics of the games he’s trying to build on than Inafune did. Granted, some of this may be due to the aforementioned graphical limitations of UE3 and the 3ds, but still…I mean, just look at Miriam’s *test* animations alone. IGA remembers exactly what people liked about how Alucard moved in SoTN, along with little details like the glowing crystal sparks coming from Miriam’s back. Looking at MN9 as it’s close to release, it seems that team wasn’t paying as much attention to what people loved about Mega Man’s enemy, level, and character design, resulting in a game that looks considerably more generic and considerably less interesting.”

So yeah, that’s why I’m still happy with my decision to back Bloodstained, at least. And that does it for this week! I think I’ll get back to writing for next week…I really should make a nice large review of Edward Feser’s “The Last Superstition.” We’ll see if I can get on that ;D